New visa policy expected to benefit families

By Jason Buch :
January 2, 2013
: Updated: January 2, 2013 10:38pm

In March, Lidia Morales can finally take the next step toward becoming a legal U.S. resident.

The 32-year-old from Guatemala came here illegally in 2006. She's married to a U.S. citizen, and they live in San Antonio with their 3-year-old son, so she can apply for a visa.

But there's been a holdup for Morales, who stays at home most days to care for her husband's mother while he works at a car dealership.

If Morales goes back to her native Guatemala to apply for a visa, she'll invoke a 10-year ban on re-entering the U.S. She can apply for a waiver of the ban, and it will most likely be granted on account of her U.S. citizen husband, but it would also mean spending anywhere from several months to a year in Guatemala, a dangerous country where she does not want to take her son.

Under the new rule, which USCIS unveiled a year ago and recently announced will go into effect March 4, Morales can stay at home with her family until her waiver is approved. Once that happens, she'll go to Guatemala and apply for her visa. The result, administration officials said Wednesday, is that a months-long process would be trimmed down to a few weeks.

“This new process facilitates the legal immigration process and reduces long periods of separation between U.S. citizens and their immediate relatives,” USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday.

Immigration laws require that the waiver applicants show “extreme hardship” to a U.S. citizen parent or spouse, and Mayorkas said that has not changed.

The new rule applies only to family members of U.S. citizens. The spouses and children of green card holders must travel to their home countries to apply for visas, but USCIS has said it will consider expanding the new policy to also cover those cases.

Morales' attorney, Joe De Mott, applauded the rule change. The prospect of a long wait away from their families is a deterrent for people who want to square their immigration status, he said.

“Most of those waivers are being approved,” De Mott said. “But the problem is, previously you've been stuck in Mexico six months, maybe a year waiting for the waiver to come through. Meanwhile, your U.S. citizen spouse is back here and the bills are piling up.”

While the new policy hasn't garnered the same opposition as has President Barack Obama's high-profile Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows some young immigrants who are in the country illegally to get temporary work visas, it drew criticism from conservatives.

Rosemary Jenks, the director of government relations at NumbersUSA, a Washington group that advocates for reducing immigration, said the waiver rule is just the latest in a series of moves by the Obama administration that encourages people to come to the country illegally, then try to fix their immigration status.

“The whole message of this waiver is we don't care about illegal immigration on the front end or the back end,” Jenks said. “We're not going to enforce our immigration laws.”

For Morales, the new rule means she can apply for a visa and a waiver, and not risk spending months in Guatemala separated from her family while awaiting approval.